Lovely Language

Word of the Day
Tuesday March 11, 2008

assuage \uh-SWAYJ\, verb:
1. To make milder or less severe; to reduce the intensity of; to ease; to relieve.
2. To appease; to satisfy.
3. To soothe or calm; to pacify.

Saw this when I went to look up a word replacement for "brat" (since *someone* thinks I use it much too often when referring to the wildly irritating behaviors of the younglings). While I'm on this subject, the *b* word will now be replaced with one of the following: monkey, whippersnapper, rascal, little terror, or moppet....all of which mean generally the same thing.

Anyways, back to "word of the day"....I thought it an interesting word. Particularly since I've been mispronouncing it all my life and didn't really even know the EXACT meaning of it (just the general sense of the word). You're probably wondering how I pronounced it, but the more I tickle it with my tongue, the more twisted it gets and now I'm having problems saying the *right* way....hahaha.

But it's easy to use in typing....i just can't say it in regular conversation. So here it is in a sentence (well....paragraph):

It was a Monday night. Monday's are the days in which all things become "Murphy'fied" so it should have been no surprise that Murphy could not assuage my dislike of Mondays by letting me by with a peaceful Monday. No, instead, when I thought I was in the home stretch, the kids were in bed and blissfully (and one, not so blissfully) sleeping, I was thisclose to heading to bed myself, when suddenly, from down the hall, I hear a strange cough--somewhat of a cross between a gurgle and a cough. When I hear it a second time, my uh-oh antenae was going up and I hurried into the K-man's room, where I was smacked in the face by an intensely TERRIBLE odor. I didn't even need to turn the lights on to figure out what was going on.

Needless to say, I spent the rest of the night doing all kinds of assuage-ing (LOL).....I assuaged the horrific smell (definition 1), I assuaged his upset stomach with sprite and crackers......and I spent the rest of the night doing more of the same.

I extremely dislike Mondays. Today was Tuesday. Today was much better. He hasn't thrown up at all today and so far, has done okay on eating. Today was not Monday.

Here's my Tuesday Message to Mondays:

Garfield's got it right! PHHHHHHHHHTTTTT on you, Mondays!!!!!!